Started reading the ComboFix instructions and got a couple pages in and gave up.... but that's pretty good for me. So I just ran it. It did it's thing and spit out a pretty big log file which appeared that it found a lot of stuff. I rebooted and now the browsers can actually load google.ca (or .com) and MSE is now showing in the taskbar on the lower right. Task manager works too. All good signs. Putting some stuff through it's paces now to make sure all is good but so far it looks good. So what's the cause here? was it a virus? Should I post the log file to diagnose it? Just trying to learn something so I can help prevent this kind of thing in the future.